


To Have and To Let Go

by Jamie_Moriarty



Category: The Blacklist (US TV)
Genre: Eventual Lizzington, F/M, Happy Red for Once, Heavy Angst, Not Really Character Death, Sad and Happy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-18 02:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18111668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamie_Moriarty/pseuds/Jamie_Moriarty
Summary: Red fakes his death in order to escape execution. Ironically it's Liz who goes to Hell as a result.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

It's everything you wanted  
It's everything you don't  
It's one door swinging open   
And one door swinging closed  
Some prayers find an answer  
Some prayers never know  
We're holding on and letting go.

(Ross Copperman, _Holdin’ On and Letting Go_ )

 

 

His face was ashen and immobile. His body, usually so animated and filled with life, lay inert on the cold slab. His eyes were shut, his mouth slack. Liz stared for a while as if she could will him to life through the sheer force of her gaze. Then she bent over him and grabbed his hand that still preserved a fraction of warmth. An illusion. A living person could not be as still as he was. Devoid of breath, his chest would no longer rise and fall. Never again. She squeezed his unmoving fingers between her own.

 

“Please don’t go,” she pleaded. “My love… please, don’t go.”

 

There was no response from the cooling body that was once a man. The man she truly, fully loved, she realized with a shock of grief. The man she killed. Her lips caressed his forehead, his closed eyes, his cheeks, but didn’t dare find his mouth. They had never kissed. They had never had anything besides arguments, fury and reproaches. And now they would never have anything else. His skin was getting cold fast. She would never be able to apologize for what she had done. She would never get to tell him how she really felt. She had wanted to come clean at the end but Dembe had stopped her and told her to let him die in peace. She had fought him on it until she saw the quiet accusation in Dembe’s deep, dark eyes. She understood then that it was her conscience she meant to soothe with her confession. Red didn’t deserve the added blow. He deserved to die believing that, despite her many past betrayals, she had been true this one last time. Even if it was a lie. She would not ease her guilt by shattering that fantasy.

 

She held onto his hand as if it was an anchor. Her heart was slowly unraveling. She kissed his closed lids one more time. One last time. They would never open and bathe her in the heat of his adoring gaze that she had come to depend upon. She would never see his smile again. She would never listen to that throaty, velvety voice that resembled slowly running, melted chocolate. She would never feel his fingers unfurl and gripped at hers in support and affection. He would never come for her. Never ever. Never again. She had gotten her wish. She had gotten rid of him. For good. And she rued the very second she had for some absurd reason decided he was the root of all evil in her life. If the present moment was any indication, she was more than capable of causing herself immense harm. Because right now she felt like she was dying, breaking apart of the seams, the gaping chasm in her middle pulling at her insides until she feared she would pulverize into dust. She grasped now why she had shot Tom Connolly at the mere suggestion of this coming to pass.

 

Deep down inside she had always known the truth. That was why she had rejected all of his attempts to leave her. Why she had feared he would vanished once he got the Fulcrum. She had never wanted to let him go despite all her protestations to the opposite. She had never wanted to be without him. And now she was. And she felt like howling at the moon with the pain it caused her.

 

What madness had possessed her to put him in this situation? She was an FBI agent. How on earth could she not have foreseen where it would all lead? Why couldn’t she just figure out she didn’t want him dead? It wasn’t so hard. She’d killed to prevent that from happening before. But it took only a moment’s folly to betray him. And now she had killed him. For all the times he had come to her rescue, she had failed to save him from herself. Truly she had been his greatest enemy and in turn she had become her own worst enemy. She had succeeded where so many had not: she had murdered the great and powerful Concierge of Crime.

 

She nearly collapsed atop of him. “Please… oh, please…,” she sobbed, not knowing herself what she was begging for. Forgiveness? A miracle? For him to triumph as he always did and open his eyes, beating the odds once more? However, despite all her assertions to his monstrosity, he was only a man. And a man could be destroyed. And destroy him, she did.

 

She heard the slight creak of the door and movement behind her but she didn’t budge. Her face remained pressed to Red’s forever still chest, his now frigid hand still gripped in hers.

 

“Agent Keen… Liz…,” came Cooper’s soft, kind voice that only jostled her pain instead of soothing it. She didn’t deserve compassion. She deserve resentment and scorn. It was too bad nobody was administering public floggings anymore.

 

She straightened herself slowly and wiped her face perfunctorily with the back of a hand. She nodded and passed Cooper by when his hand darted for her. She didn’t want his support. She deserved it even less. She headed for the door like a woman condemned, fearful of meeting Dembe’s eyes but knowing she would have to spend the rest of her life bearing the much-deserved, silent blame of Red’s brother.

 

_It was you…. You killed him._

 

She couldn’t argue that point. She took no more than two or three steps in the corridor when she collapsed. It was so unexpected, she couldn’t even gasp in surprise. Her legs simply cut from underneath her and she found herself tumbling rapidly to the floor. Someone grabbed her from behind, firm fingers holding onto the back of her arms and pulling her up again.

 

“It’s okay, Liz,” Ressler whispered to her in a voice meant to be comforting. “It’ll be okay.”

 

She shook her head. It would never be okay.

 

* * *

Red opened his eyes in the semi-obscurity of a septic smelling room, the steady beep of a heart monitor ringing in his ears. It was deja-vu all over again. His mouth was dry and there was a faint metallic tang on his tongue. He wouldn’t rate dying as a favorite experience. There was a figure with him in the room, outlined by the faint, yellowish light the partially closed blinds allowed in the room. He didn’t need much brightness to recognize who it was.

 

“I changed my mind,” he muttered, his voice sounding hoarse to his own ears. “I want to go back to dying. Hell can’t possibly be worse than this.”

 

“If I have to suffer, you have to suffer,” came an equally disgruntled voice from somewhere on Red’s left.

 

He turned his head. His neck was a little stiff. He squinted as his gaze fell on Leonard Caul. “Hello, old friend,” he said only half sardonically.

 

“Your funeral was nice,” Caul retorted. “Lots of flowers. Your so-called friends did a thorough job at assuaging their guilty consciences.”

 

Red hid a wince. It hurt to think of the last batch of betrayals he had endured and he expected that the wound would never really heal. He had grown somewhat inured to Liz’s treason but Dembe of all people? Usually betrayal filled him with anger and desire for vengeance but all he felt now was defeat. If a good man like Dembe could see a soul in him, then Red could almost believe he had one left. Without that, the world was dark without even the hope of light.

 

“It wasn’t his funeral,” the woman at the window replied archly, distracting Red’s from his bleak musings. “But Raymond Reddington’s, renegade Navy officer who abandoned his family and country in order to build a criminal empire and committed numerous murders for which he was convicted to death and executed by lethal injection. If anyone’s curious and exhumes the body, they would find its DNA matches that of the leftover blood sample from one of the missions he conducted while he was still a law-abiding citizen. You’re not Raymond Reddington,” she finished her tirade wriggling a finger in his direction. “By the way, I never said: welcome back, Mr. Kershaw!”

 

Caul scoffed. Red flinched. He had treated his own real surname like an alias for so long, it sounded alien to him. He didn’t even want to think about people around him starting to use his real first name again.

 

“Well, this has been a lovely reunion and I would love to stay and chat,” the woman spoke again without even the pretense of sincerity. “But I do have a job to do.” She ripped open the blinds with a single gesture.

 

Red winced at the stab of bright sunlight. The window displayed a clear, blue sky the color of which reminded him painfully of Elizabeth’s. He slammed the breaks on both grief and self-piety. He would never see her again. As far as she knew, he was dead and buried, and he would stay that way. Lest she put him in a grave for real. Of all his enemies, she was the most dangerous one. More dangerous than Kate even. Kate had failed to loop Dembe in her schemes. In the end, Dembe had sided with him. But Elizabeth hadn’t missed that one. She could hit him when he least suspected and he would never be ready for it because his guard would never not be down around her. And her appearance of innocence that had once fooled him too would always make enemies of the closest of his friends. Normally he would swiftly eliminate such a peril but he was incapable of harming her. Even now. After everything. So that left him with only one solution.

 

“Welcome home gifts,” the woman said pointing to two thick manila envelope on his white, hospital style nightstand. “Since you blew up your old house and the apartment in Bethesda isn’t secure yet, we had no recourse but to assign you a safe house. Have a speedy recovery, Mr. Kershaw… Mr. Caul….”

 

With that she sauntered out of the room, the clacking of her hail trailing close behind.

 

“No place like home, eh?” Caul commented acidly.

 

Red smirked. “Where I have been wasn’t exactly over the rainbow, either.”

 

“Welcome back, William. For what it’s worth, I was rooting for you to disappear into the sunset somewhere… the tailor of Panama style… with the money and the girl and everything. All things considered, I guess a hellhole still beats the grave.”

 

Red looked at his old colleague with a mix of affection and exhaustion. “I suppose so…. Thank you, Leonard,” he added meaningfully.

 

Caul nodded and stepped towards the door. “I was sorry to hear about Gregory. After you get out of here, maybe you and I can go and have a drink… for fallen comrades.”

 

Red agreed readily and then Caul left as well. Once alone, Red had no respite from his own thoughts. So he resolved to distract himself with the two envelopes that had been left to him. The first one housed his real paperwork: ID, driver’s license—helpfully renewed, his real passport, various clearances and two sets of keys, one of them for a car, from the looks of it. The man he never thought he would be again immortalized on paper. Only a few things were lacking: his family, friends, peace of mind and a clear conscience. The rest was all there. The second envelope was even more gut-wrenching: the first photograph he glimpsed showed a granite headstone with the name _Raymond Reddington_ etched onto it. Below it there was the year the man he had impersonated for three decades had been born and that of his alleged death. Nothing else. But then what else was there to say about a vicious criminal who had been put down like a rabid dog? The fresh looking grave was covered in flowers, just like Caul had said. All of them red. He shoved the rest of the pictures back into the envelope without looking at them and tossed the wrapper into the garbage bin by his bed.

 

# # #

 

The flowers, red like blood, mocked her. Liz had started weeping when the coffin was being lowered in. Quietly, discreetly. At her side, Aram was more open about his pain. Samar leaned heavily on Aram’s arm, pale and grim. Dembe stood across the grave from her, alone at the front, after having delivered a short, stoic eulogy. He had read a poem at the end. Liz wondered if the poet was one Red favored. The question pierced her like a knife. She knew preciously few things about Red and it couldn’t be all attributed to him. Many times he had meant to tell her things, not major secrets, just small factoids that made the entirety of what one considered a person, but she had refused to listen. So many wasted opportunities!

 

 _When you awaken in the morning's hush_  
I am the swift uplifting rush   
Of quiet birds in circled flight.   
I am the soft stars that shine at night.   
Do not stand at my grave and cry;   
I am not there. I did not die.  

 

She still feared looking at Dembe.

 

The cemetery was quiet on that warm, sunny spring morning. A gentle zephyr ruffled Liz’s hair and suffused her nostril with the scent of flowers. She began to sob in earnest, the violence of it making her ribs ache. She leapt towards the grave but somebody held her back. She didn’t know who it was. It didn’t matter. She heard hoarse, desperate cries of _No_ and _I’m sorry._ It took her a while to realize it was in her own voice. The arms still wrapped around her were keeping her at bay. She thought of being in Red’s arms and of how safe she had felt there with him. He had felt like home. She wasn’t just his way home, as he had said so many times. He was her home as well. Instead of leading him home, though, she had lead him to a grave and herself to the barren desolation that was currently consuming her. She had lost him. And it was all her fault. She kept on screaming.

 

* * *

 

Liz picked the pitiful lock of the lock to the graveyard with great ease and sprinted inside. She used a tiny flashlight she sometimes carried in a pocket to find her way around. Her phone was still back at her apartment. Sometime after the funeral, her task force colleagues had dragged her home and talked her into a few mouthfuls of the hot soup they had ordered her. They had lingered some more, sharing drinks from her Chardonnay that Red would have disproved of and anecdotes of him. Aram had failed to finish even one before his tears had clogged his throat.

 

“I can’t help thinking that… maybe if we hadn’t dug into his real identity… then perhaps… none of this would have happened. I mean, he warned us….”

 

That did it for Liz! She bolted upwards, the contents of her soup container spilling onto the carpet.

 

“It was me! Alright?! I killed him. Nobody else. I turned him in. It was my fault he was in prison, my fault he was on death row… my fault he died.”

 

The room went still and utterly silent. She forced her eyes to find Dembe by the window. Glen had been at the funeral but he had not followed her home as well. Dembe looked as stricken as she had imagined.

 

“I killed your brother,” she told him. “I killed the man who saved you… and before that I pushed you into lying to him. I made a traitor out of you too. And there can’t be no forgiveness for what I’ve done. So I’m not even gonna bother asking.”

 

She marched into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. She thought for a beat and placed a chair by it too. Then she climbed out of the window. She roamed the city until nightfall, stopping to cry here, dry heave there. Sometime after dark, she made it back to the graveyard.

 

She sat down by his headstone, curling on the cool, damp ground, and rested her head on the unforgiving granite. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to go empty.

 

* * *

 

The safe house was not a house at all but a brownstone. On a lively street with neighbors. Out of a habit born from decades in hiding, he skulked about, the lapels of his coat raised and covering his face with his large, cognac-colored sunglasses. However, all he could detect was the rather discreet presence of what he knew to be his security detail. He reminded himself that the average American didn’t know or care about recently executed convicts. Even if someone was to recognize him, they would chalk it up to deja-vu or a freak resemblance. As far as the world knew, Raymond Reddington was dead and buried. He was no longer Raymond Reddington. He was William Kershaw again, he repeated his newfound mantra to himself. It stung to recall he had told himself the very same thing when he had become Raymond Reddington. It didn’t matter. William Kershaw was not a criminal. William Kershaw was a free man.

 

An attractive forty-something blonde smiled at him as he climbed the steps to his new abode then she went next door. He smiled back and inclined his head slightly in response. It hit him. He could live here for a while. He no longer needed to move every two nights. He opened the door. The place was furnished and quite lovely, certainly lovelier than he had expected. It was tasteful with a decidedly vintage flair. He suppressed a pang at the sudden thought of sharing it with Dembe and attached the chain before he went to have a look around.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_A year later_

 

Liz sprinted from her bedroom to the bathroom. She would be late for work if she didn’t hurry. Then she saw him: dressed in the burgundy suit he had worn in court a few times, his eyes piercing, ablaze with fury. His trusty Browning HiPower was in his right hand. Liz nodded. She knew why he was here. He had come for her but not to save her. Not this time. This time he had come to settle the score. Liz stood still, not pleading, not arguing, not trying to defend herself. The cold barrel of the gun rested on her forehead before it slipped along her temple and down to her left cheek almost as if in a caress. Liz leaned into it, soaking up this last shred of affection from him. Her eyes closed. A second later she felt the ginger stroke of warm, slightly calloused skin on her face. Her eyes snapped back open. Hope fluttered weakly within her. In her dreams he was always vengeful and filled with wrath. In his dreams he always came to seek retribution. He was never careful, never gentle. Perhaps, just perhaps this was real.

 

She heard the soft clatter as he placed his gun on the nearby coffee table. She looked up at him eagerly.

 

“There’s something I want from you before I make you pay for your betrayal,” he rumbled, his voice as gravely and as familiar as it had ever been.

 

“Anything,” Liz breathed, hope spiking up within her chest. She stepped closer. Her own heartbeat was louder in her ears and her whole body seemed to be vibrating.

 

He swept her up in his arms bridal style. Liz clung to him and rested her head on his chest, his hearr rapping strongly and steadily beneath her cheek. She smiled, pushing back tears. It was real. He was real, warm and compact against her. He smelled of comfort and safety with just a hint of lavender. There was a thousand things she wanted to tell him, _I love you_ , _I missed you_ and _I’m sorry_ chief among them but she held her tongue. This was not what he wanted. This was not what he had come here for. He settled her down by her bed. When she would gaze at him again, he was gone.

 

“Red!”

 

She ran back into the living room.

 

“Raymond… wait… stay… don’t go… I’ll do anything…. Please!”

 

He was there in the living room indeed. Her world righted itself and she breathed in deeply, relief washing over her in a tidal wave. He grabbed his gun again but only to point it at the carpet. He shook his head, his face smoothed over with sadness, and dissolved into thin air before she could reach for him.

 

“No….”

 

The word was on Liz’s lips when she woke up. She dreamt of him often so this was nothing new. She combed a hand through the tangled knots of her hair and glanced at her alarm clock. She had a good half hour before she needed to be up. Still she stumbled to her feet and ambled into the bathroom to throw up. This, too, was routine of late. In the morning, her stomach usually rejected her liquid dinner. Lately it was mostly vodka. The cheap, supermarket kind she could buy in bulk so she wouldn’t waste much time on shopping she didn’t feel like doing, anyway. She had given up on white wine half a year ago when she discovered hard liquor did a better job of knocking her out. It was the only way she could sleep.

 

She washed her face with cold water and brushed her teeth twice before she hopped into the shower. She dressed in clothes that were also routine now: black jeans, red-colored—today, crimson—top and her well worn black leather jacket. Then she tied her hair in a ponytail. She popped two pieces of stale bread in the toaster and made coffee. Breakfast of the champions. After she ate, she would take her gun and leave for work.

 

In the car she caught sight of herself in the rear view mirror. Usually she avoided looking at herself when she could. She didn’t exactly look gaunt but she wasn’t far away from it, either. She was also ghostly pale and her lips were in dire need of a chapstick. She fished her only one—a drugstore purchase on a whim—from the glove compartment and applied it blindly. Then she started the engine. If she went in now, she would be early. So instead she headed for the cemetery.

 

There was a florist’s not far away from the graveyard. She bought a large bouquet of red tulips. She didn’t know what Red’s favorite flowers had been and didn’t dare ask Dembe, either. There never seemed to be a shortage of things she didn’t know about Red. One of the groundskeepers greeted her when she entered the cemetery. She waved back and then continued on her way to Red’s grave. It was well maintained, the headstone so pristine it seemed brand new. It wasn’t entirely her doing. She placed the flowers on the grave with a slow, careful hand, before she sat down next to the stone.

 

“Morning, Red,” she began. “On a scale of one to a million, how unhappy are you to see me?” She paused and snorted. “Remember when we met at my gravestone… after I… after Cuba? You were so angry and I couldn’t see it. But then I never could see much of anything, could I?” She smiled ruefully. “You’d be so much angrier now… before this gravestone…. If you only knew…. There are so many things that you don’t know… that I never told you. That I never told myself. I think they may be even more numerous than all those secrets I kept hounding you about. Funny how I don’t care about any of them now. If only it wasn’t too late.” She lay a hand over his first name engraved in granite. “I’m not even curious about your real name. Many people have the same name. Besides, it isn’t like I’m using my real name either… and nobody’s giving me any grief that I don’t call myself Masha Rostova. You were a Raymond Reddington… the Raymond Reddington I knew…. Anyway, I hope you’re at peace now… wherever you are. I hope you found that way home you always craved.”

 

* * *

 

After finishing his bout of calisthenics, Red stepped onto the small, secluded backyard patio for some tai chi. Spring had come early and air was friendly and luminous. He breathed in deeply, reveling in the quiet around him. He could actually hear birds chirping. The cherry tree in his yard would be in bloom in a day or two. The pink flowers would be reflected in the lovely, little koi pond beneath. He stretched, enjoying the slight burn in his back and arms. He gave up on tai chi sooner than he had planned as he was too consumed with thoughts of breakfast.

 

In his restaurant size kitchen he put on one of Sophie Alour’s records and started rummaging around. The cream-colored French country house décor was deceptive. His kitchen was equipped with all the modern appliances he might need. He had balked when the realtor had mentioned intelligent houses, though. He moved with ease beneath the high ceilings and intricate, Louis XIV style arches. The gigantic fridge was hidden beneath an elegant armoire topped with iron work brought over from Italy. The double oven was obscured within the Madura Gold granite island at the center that also held the wet bar.

 

He made semolina pancakes, scrambled eggs with black truffles and Hong Kong-style coffee with sweetened tea, packed everything so that it would stay warm and dashed upstairs for a quick shower and a visit to his closet. He emerged wearing a deep cerulean waistcoat, dress slack exactly two hues darker, a Zegna cotton and linen, light blue shirt with cutaway English collar, ivory tie and long, gray cashmere coat. He missed his old tailor and still wasn’t sure where hats fit into his new life.

 

Grabbing the food from the kitchen, he made a beeline for the garage. He had been giving Mercedeses a wide birth lately. He climbed into a black 1958 Corvette with perfectly restored cherry red interiors. Though the cover was closed, he still put on sunglasses before revving the engine. Leah teased him mercilessly about the car and he was unsure himself as to why he had acquired it. Perhaps it was because as a teenager he had dreamed of owning such a vehicle and now he could admit openly to that. After all, he wasn’t impersonating anyone anymore. As he pulled out of his driveway, he cast one last look to the brick cottage style home with its facade partly covered by lush ivy. It had a bit of a wrap-around with slender, tan columns and an elegantly restored, vintage, wooden bench. He had gone a little overboard with the kitchen, but otherwise the place was cozy and intimate enough.

 

The first two months after his most recent death, he had carefully moved assets, money and even people from his old crime syndicate, as well as making several other administrative and technical arrangements. That had been over faster than he would have liked. Left with uneven and comparatively few work hours, he had spent his time brooding. When he hadn’t been brooding, he had been moping. When he hadn’t been moping, he had been sulking. After six months, he decided he wasn’t the type to stay indoors mourning a lost life and lost friends that might not have been his to begin with. So he began to search for a house and a car. Three months ago, when walking out of a tedious, pretentious butchering of a Eugene O’Neill play, he had met Leah.

 

He hadn’t meant anything by it. He had fully anticipated being done with relationships and he was perfectly content spending the rest of his life caring for Josephine. He had made the necessary arrangements to have her moved from Paris to the US while also paying her French doctor handsomely to inform Dembe she had died. Otherwise his brother would have been suspicious of her sudden disappearance.

 

He had spent nearly two hours in a pleasant and intelligent conversation with Leah, a pleasant and intelligent young woman, at the theater's cafe fully expecting that to be it. Only that she had asked for his number before he helped her find a cab home. It wasn’t that he hadn’t investigated her thoroughly. Oh but he had! He was more than twice bitten. And he had come up empty. Leah wasn’t just normal, she was also well-adjusted and that was downright terrifying. She had no connection to any of the worlds in which he had existed. She wasn’t even working in law-enforcement. Her family owned an organic produce business in upstate New York. She had moved to DC for college, had been offered a job as a vision itinerant teacher there so she had stayed. She had also been born blind but that didn’t phase much. Another thing that didn’t phase her was their age difference for Leah wasn’t even thirty yet. All the facts indicated that he wasn’t just dating, he was dating someone sane. It was something of a personal record

 

* * *

 

“Hello there,” the caretaker who had saluted Liz earlier greeted her. “Back again, eh?”

 

Liz nodded without getting up from next to Red’s gravestone.

 

“I’m sorry for your loss, Miss.” He glanced at the years marked in granite. “Was that your father?”

 

Liz tensed. “No,” she said firmly.

 

“Oh.”

 

 _Oh_ indeed!

 

She got up, dabbing at her eyes with her fingers. She hadn’t even realized she had been crying. After a year she kept expecting the fountain of her tears to dry up already.

 

“I’m sure he was a good man… whoever he was,” the stranger said after a bit of an uncomfortable pause. “I mean, you’re here almost every day. That must count for something.”

 

It didn’t but she didn’t tell him that. “Yes,” she said out loud. “He was a good man.”

 

* * *

 

Simba was barking and scratching at the door before Leah had a chance to open it.

 

“William,” she enthused once the door cracked apart.

 

He chuckled warmly. “Good morning.”

 

She wore a slip, printed dress with a ruffled skirt that stopped right above her slim, pale knees. Her long, golden red tresses were framing her delicately drawn face in a lovely manner. He went in, pausing to scratch Simba, her golden retriever, behind his ears. Then he kisses her gently, chastely on the lips.

 

“I come bearing breakfast,” he informed her.

 

She grinned, the light of her smile not touching the blank stare in her too still olive green eyes. “I can tell.”

 

They unpacked it together while he chatted merrily about beghrir, the melt-in-your-mouth, Morrocan semolina pancakes and the virtues of Hong Kong style coffee. She took out plates from an overhead kitchen cabinet with no hesitation whatsoever. Her apartment held no secrets for her. Suddenly he realized he had been the only who had been speaking for a few good minutes.

 

“Am I boring you?”

 

“No, no,” she said. “It’s just that… well, your voice… I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s a little like these pancakes,” she explained stealing another piece of golden fluff. “Tender and tasting of honey but also rich and exotic. I know! It’s like a honeycomb that’s been dipped into scrumptious, dark chocolate seasoned with some secret herb that just makes it perfect.” She stopped, spots of pink dancing high on her cheeks. “What? Too ridiculous. You have to speak. I can’t gauge your reactions by sight. Remember I’m blind?”

 

“You’re just angling to hear more of my chocolate dipped honeycomb voice,” he joked, grasping her left hand in his on her modest formica countertop. His thumb stroked a line on her soft-skinned palm.

 

“You caught me.”

 

His phone chirped interrupting the moment.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

 

She assured him she understood. He sank back into the living room to answer. He missed burners. It had been surprisingly hard to find a regular cell that was also a flip phone.

 

“You need to come in,” a terse female voice informed him.

 

“I’ll be right there,” he replied and flipped the phone shut.

 


	3. Chapter 3

_A year ago_

 

_I love you…._

 

_Raymond, I do love…._

 

Red blinked, a mass of confused emotions vying for his attention. He wanted to believe. He yearned to believe. Even if she didn’t really love him and she had just lied to throw a dying man a bone, he could accept it. He would die gladly knowing she cared enough to tell that lie. It certainly beat the alternative. He had tried to persuade himself of it. When she had come, he had fully expected a final attempt to wring his secrets out of him but then she had looked at him as though her very soul was dying and for a brief second he had feared something abominable had happened to her. And then she said it.

 

_I love you._

 

Those sweet, sweet words uttered by the beloved lips of the woman he adored. He had never dared dream of being worthy of such bliss, disfigured fish lost to the dark that he was. He had always put her on a pedestal, seeing himself as utterly and completely undeserving of her. Breath was punched out of his lungs. It was worth dying if only to hear the precious princess of his heart say those wonderful words. She had said them before. Almost anyway. As she was about to loose consciousness to whatever drugs Kate had pumped her full of in order to fake her death. But he had never hoped she meant him. He had never hoped she was lucid enough to know what she was saying. Yet now here she was, fully awake and aware, telling him she loved him. No more demands, no last minute recriminations, no anger, no hissed, resentful words.

 

It should have been perfection… safe for the niggling root of doubt sprouting in his head. His kind, soulful mother had understood the human heart at war itself and currently his heart was waging a desperate battle with his head. The first and only time Lizzy had told him she loved him was when she had been about to inflict a terrible betrayal upon him, one that despite his constant love had shattered the foundations of trust between them. One that had transformed his precious, pure, incandescent, sometimes hard, sometimes soft Lizzy into the unknowable, dark, always hard, always despising him Elizabeth. One that had him wondering if Lizzy wasn’t perhaps a figment of his imagination while Elizabeth was the real woman.

 

He didn’t need her words to be true. He would have died a happy man if she had been only throwing him a bone. But if her words were a flicker of a guilty conscience faced with the reality of what she had wrought. He recognized the sentiment: he had done many horrible things with regret yet with the grim determination that he had had to carry them through. He didn’t coddle those he killed himself nor did he lie about what he was. However, Liz needed to be able to assure herself she was still a good person. She needed the appearance of self-righteousness.

 

He had been as ready to die as he would ever be, content in the knowledge that his Lizzy had people in her life who loved her and who would go to bat for her. He could almost believe he enjoyed the same privilege watching her and the task force move heaven and hell trying to save him. He had Dembe. Despite all their differences, he and Harold had seemed to become almost what one could call friends. He had the respect of Ressler, his dodged once pursuer, the affection and support of Aram and Samar. And now seemingly the love of Lizzy as well. However, as soon as the words left her mouth, doubt set in, poisoning everything.

 

The edifice of his certainties crumbled. If Lizzy had indeed betrayed him again, then Dembe had lied to him. His brother—the good and honest man—had deceived him. He had betrayed him too. Cooper’s words from the old, painful days of Kate’s treason resounded in his mind. Harold had intimated he deserved to be betrayed, rubbing it in that he had a home and loving people in his life while Red had none of those of things. He recalled Ressler’s resentful words from back when his brother had been ill. Had they all turned on him? Were they all on it together, taking advantage of his prison bound lack of mobility, to feign efforts to safe his life while in reality they were the ones who had set him up to be executed? Trapped like a caged rat, he could do nothing to investigate. However, he needed to know. The seeds of doubt germinating in his head demanded nothing less.

 

* * *

 

The cell block was plunged into absolute darkness but only for an instant. A single light bulb lit up in front of Red’s cell. No alarm sounded, however. Nobody on the block made a sound. Every muscle in Red’s body tensed. He guessed he was the only one not to have been slipped a sedative in his food. He saw the dark silhouette behind the bars and he stood up.

 

“Looks who’s finally decided he wanted to live after all.” The edge in her voice was sardonic, making him instantly regret sending the signal.

 

“What did you find out?” he asked warily.

 

She handed him a satellite phone through the bars. “Our people talked to the homeless woman who made the 911 call. She identified Agent Keen as one of the instigators but the one who paid her off was Jennifer Reddington. We have a location on her and she’s been placed under surveillance. If she becomes a problem, she will be contained. As far as our investigation indicates, everybody on the FBI task force is aware you’re not Raymond Reddington. Do you have reason to suspect they know who you really are?”

 

There it was. He could get each and every member of the task force killed with a single _yes_. It wasn’t true. Not even Dembe knew everything. There was no way the task force could have learned who he truly was. But they had betrayed him and right now he could make them pay for it with their lives.

 

“No,” he said, electing to tell the truth.

 

* * *

 

_Present Day_

 

Liz sauntered along the corridors at Quantico towards the bull pen of the Counterterrorism Division. After Red’s execution, the task force had been disbanded and the black site decommissioned. Cooper had managed to retain her and Ressler under his authority but keeping Samar on without the reason for which Mossad had sent her over had been more complicated. Cooper had pulled quite a few favors to accomplish that. Samar’s recovery was nearly at an end and she and Aram had been married in a small, quiet ceremony a few months ago. While Aram was more lenient, Samar visibly blamed Liz for what had happened to Red. That was alright with Liz. She blamed herself too.

 

The agents Liz ran into scampered away quickly. Liz wasn’t surprised. Given her checkered track record with the Bureau and away from the safe haven of the Post Office, the rumors about her had swirled and they were all inevitably nasty. She was being called names and not always behind her back and none of them were as nice as _Sir_. She was aware she hadn’t helped matters by punching Julian Gale in the face and didn’t care. Despite Ressler’s not always friendly warnings, Gale had gloated openly about Red’s execution. So Liz had slugged him and broken his nose. In front of a rec room filled with fellow agents. Cooper had pulled all the favors he had left available after helping out Samar to get off Liz with only two months suspension without pay and no formal charges.

 

Liz had spent the two months to herself burning through her savings by getting high on opium in Mama Lu’s den, which she tracked down with surprising ease. She really had learnt a lot from Red. She had hallucinated him a lot during that time. Sometimes, in her hallucinations, he wasn’t angry with her but smiling in that adoring fashion that seemed reserved solely for her. She missed him with a fierceness that ached.

 

In the bullpen she all but bumped into Julian Gale.

 

“Hello, Julian, how’s your nose?” she asked with fake cheer.

 

He glared at her. “Better than your career, Keen.”

 

“Meanwhile I don’t see you making Assistant Director soon,” she tossed back.

 

Ressler took that moment to step in. “Let’s not make this into a wrestling event.”

 

“Why? I’d win.” Liz itched to take her pain and fury out on someone and Julian Gale was just fine for that purpose, even if her anger was all self-directed.

 

Ressler sighed, pleading with her with his eyes. “Cooper wants to see us.”

 

“That’s right.” Gale saw fit to continue. “Run to daddy. He’s always protecting his little girl. That’s why you’ve never faced consequences no matter what you did… like sleeping with your criminal informant.”

 

Liz spun around, her arm already coming up. Ressler caught her wrist in the nick of time.

 

“Julian,” Ressler cautioned. “I told you she’d kill you one of these days.”

 

Liz lowered her hand. “I’m not ashamed of sleeping with Reddington,” she ground out. “I’m proud of it.”

 

Gale’s mouth formed a perfect O. He had been clearly just baiting her and not expecting a confession of any kind.

 

“Could you have said that any louder?” Ressler whispered to her on their way to Cooper’s office.

 

“Yes,” she hissed.

 

Ressler grabbed her arm and pulled her into a nearby empty office.

 

“I thought Cooper was waiting for us,” she said.

 

“He is but right now I’m more concerned about you. Liz, you’re spiraling out of control.”

 

“I’m fine,” she huffed.

 

“No, you’re not!”

 

Liz glared at him without replying.

 

“Liz… it’s been a year!”

 

“If you think blame has an expiration date, just ask Samar. She’ll set you straight right away.”

 

“Red wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself. He’d want you to be healthy and happy. That’s all he ever wanted!”

 

The bark of dry, sarcastic laughter scratched at her throat on its way out. “Red died thinking I’m some kind of a saint. If he had known the truth, all he would have wanted was to put a bullet between my eyes… like he’s always done with traitors. Loyalty was the ultimate red line with him.”

 

Ressler’s eyes softened. “You don’t mean that.”

 

Liz brushed past him. “Yeah, I do. Now let’s go before Cooper dispatches a search party to find us.”

 

* * *

 

The elevator ride seemed endless. Red stifled a sigh. This place was a far cry from the Post Office. A bunker of concrete buried deep within the earth, a derelict warehouse above concealing its existence further. He stepped into a rather narrow open space brightly lit by white, halogen lights. He squinted and fought back a second sigh.

 

Vontae’s eyes found him and sparked. He dashed from behind a desk and hurried to meet up with Red.

 

“Red,” Vontae said instead of hello. “Not that I’m not happy you got me out of prison but these people are scarier than hardened criminals.”

 

“Locking these people in any contained space even with hardened criminals would be inhumane,” Red opined dully.

 

Vontae winced. “Thanks for locking me up here with them then.”

 

“You can leave anytime you want,” Red pointed out.

 

“Like they wouldn’t find me anywhere.”

 

Red smiled in what he hoped was encouragement. “Let’s see what they want and then I’ll take you out for lunch. I know a lovely Ukrainian place....”

 

The blaring of a loud alarm interrupted him. Red frowned. “What’s happening?”

 

A petite, stocky built brunette with sharp, hawk like eyes stood up and pointed to one of the large monitors at the center of the room. “Perimeter breach,” she said in a voice devoid of any inflection.

 

Red drew closer with Vontae close behind. The monitor displayed an imagine from the street cameras right outside. It showed an FBI team getting ready to storm the building on top of them. If they did, they would no doubt discovered the concealed elevator leading downstairs. Red froze recognizing Elizabeth and Ressler among them. He turned towards the brunette who had spoken previously, his glare demanding an immediate answer.

 

“Raquel,” he snapped.

 

She set down her cell phone. “I’m sorry, Sir. I was just receiving intel from HQ. It seems the FBI got an anonymous tip that this address houses a homegrown terrorist cell. I recommend implementing Protocol 67.”

 

“You wanna release cyanide gas on FBI agents,” Vontae said, outrage and disbelief coloring his voice.

 

Red shared his sentiment but could see Raquel’s point as well.

 

“The gas will give us time to evacuate before the incineration is complete.”

 

Red swiveled around, checking the monitors one more time. The FBI agents were putting on masks no doubt intent on using tear gas as part of their tactic. “Initiate Protocol 67,” he ordered. “And evacuate the building.”

 

The alarm changed tonality in under a second. When he turned around, Red caught Vontae staring at him like he was seeing for the first time. “Let’s go,” Red instructed.

 

* * *

 

Liz surveyed the warehouse. Though dilapidated, it had all but one entrances blocked and the narrow alley leading up to it was a one-way street. Something was off about the whole thing, from the tip itself to this place. Working without Red’s endless fountain of information and connections in the criminal world was slow and frustrating. The past year had been a slog through mountains of paper work and mostly unsuccessful raids. It was hard not to compare and contrast with all the years at the Post Office, all the people they had saved and all the catastrophes they had averted. Now like many times before she thought of the all the people they could have saved this year as well if only they had Red with them. She couldn’t believe she had once resented his involvement with them and told him his fight with the Cabal was his problem not hers. She was the officer of the law, not him. Since when it was his job to fight back guys not hers?

 

Pushing the guilt to the back of her mind to deal with it later when she was alone and had alcohol at the ready, Liz went in with her fellow agents. They released the tear gas almost immediately. The whole place was eerily quiet. Tendrils of white, slim vapor were raising from the uneven cement that paved the floor. Liz frowned. It didn’t seem to be their tear gas.

 

“What’s that?” Gale wondered somewhere to her left.

 

“Sir, come see this,” someone called to Ressler pointing to a hatch in the floor.

 

Samar removed her mask for only a split second. Liz cried out in warning, overcome by a sudden bad feeling.

 

“Almonds,” Samar yelled. “It’s cyanide gas.”

 

“Everybody out now!” Ressler commanding gesturing wildly that they left.

 

Liz had a moment to watch two agents lift the heavy trap door barring the hatch. It opened into an elevator shaft. The faint echo of what sounded suspiciously like an alarm reverberated from deep within. Then she took off running with the rest of them.

 

They were out of the building for a minute or so when it shook powerfully once, dust exploding out of its already shattered windows, then the roof caved in. The blast sounded oddly mollified.

 

Samar removed her mask. “Whatever was down that elevator shaft is gone,” she diagnosed.

 

“Mass suicide?” Ressler puzzled.

 

Liz shook her head, looking around, the wind blowing the few strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail around her face. “No. They knew we were coming.”

 

“How?” Gale wanted to know.

 

“Street cams,” Liz replied eyeing the utility poles that lined the street.

 

“Aram checked,” Ressler said. “There are no street cams around here.”

 

“Not that we know of,” Liz answered. “Or can see.”

 

Hands on her hips, Liz took a fresh look at her surroundings. She heard Ressler contact Aram back at Quantico demanding that the tech whiz verified the situation of street surveillance in the area again. She doubted Aram would get different results this time. All around her the rest of the agents were busy getting their bearings and calling in after their all-too-brief and utterly strange raid. She spied a tall brick fence stretching past the now half crumbled warehouse. She sprinted in that direction and jumped over it landing in another back alley.

 

She was just about to communicate her location to her colleagues when her entire world came to a screeching halt. It wasn’t even the black SUVs that she noted first. Her vision was reduced to a single point. There in the middle of the street stood a dead man.

 


	4. Chapter 4

It couldn’t be! It just couldn’t be real. She was either dreaming or hallucinating or being faced with a double. But it couldn’t be him. He was dead. She had held his inert, cold hand. She had stood over his dead body kissing him goodbye. She had buried him. She had mourned him for a year. She had been punishing herself relentlessly for causing his death. He was dead. He couldn’t be there with her.

 

Yet here he was: staring at her in a remote, almost clinical manner. He had never looked at her like that. That was how she knew: it couldn’t be him. He was dead. Yet here he was: his beloved, much missed face bathed in sunlight, drawn elegantly as if by the hand of a great master of centuries past. His Cupid’s bow curled in a familiar snarl. His closely shorn, almost mathematical in its precision hair glinted golden, though she knew it to be honey brown. It had to be a trick of light. Perhaps the entire apparition was a trick of light.

 

He looked like he always did: fancy waistcoat, faintly stripped, perfectly ironed shirt, dress slacks, nice tie. Only his trademark fedora was missing. She had been dead too once, as far as he knew, she recalled. Maybe… maybe this was real.

 

A petite woman with dark, shoulder long hair and bronze skin stepped between Liz and Red aiming a SIG Sauer at her. Liz felt somebody lift her gun from the holster at her back while another hand pried off her ear piece. Deftly, rapidly. Professional job, she realized dimly, though she couldn’t find within herself to be alarmed. Her eyes were still glued to _him_.

 

“Red,” she breathed, not daring to hope. She dove for him and out of the reach of a pair of hand aiming to grab her.

 

“Stay back,” the woman in front of Red commanded.

 

“It’s alright, Raquel,” he said, the low, honeyed baritone painfully familiar to Liz. “I’ve been defending myself for a long time.”

 

Liz ignored the weapon trained on her and the obvious danger. She needed to know. Her arms wound around him just in time to sense his muscles tense. She pressed her nose to the skin of his neck. Lavender and a heady, underlying scent that uniquely his. It was him! Strong and compact against her and real. Oh, so very real. She tightened her grip on him and pressed a light kiss just below his ear. If Liz were the type to go faint, which she decidedly wasn’t, she would have fainted from the sheer magnitude of her relief. She had no idea how it was possible but through some miracle he was alive and in her embrace. That was all that matter. She had him again. Her eyes went misty with happiness.

 

The slight prickled on the side of her neck came as a complete surprise. She looked up in confusion. She knew without checking to see if he had the syringe in his hand, that it had been him.

 

“Why?” she asked weakly. She would have gone with him anywhere.

 

* * *

 

Liz woke up tied up to a metallic chair, her hands cuffed behind her back. Only a bright glare atop her head lit her darkened surroundings. They seemed as bleak and as sparse as the warehouse she and her team had just raided. Her jacket was gone and she appeared to be strapped to a Polygraph machine. Red sat across from her, regal and apparently unconcerned, though his seating arrangements looked just as uncomfortable as hers. At least, he wasn’t bound. No, he sat cross-legged, leaning back in his chair, studying Liz in a most peculiar way. Perhaps it only seemed strange because she had never before seen him watch her without any of the warmth that was reserved solely for her.

 

Liz swallowed over a dry and scratchy throat. “Is it…? Is it really you?”

 

“Yes.” One low uttered, calmly layered word.

 

Liz blinked, feeling the hot trail left behind by a tear on her left cheek. “I mourned you…. I had to stay outside as they burnt what I thought was your body…. It’s been a year, Raymond!” His first name slipped unbidden. “A year!” She began to cry harder. “I stood above your grave… Drowning in guilt and pain….”

 

He got up, his face showing no significant change in expression. He pulled out a crisp, white handkerchief and began to dab at her face, wiping her tears. The soft material smelled like him and Liz leaned into the impersonal gesture as if it were a caress. When he would draw back, she chased his hand with her mouth, her lips brushing the tip of his fingers.

 

“Now you know how it feels,” he said as he returned to reclaim his seat.

 

That was right! Liz had faked her death too. She flashed back to him waiting for her at her false grave. He had been livid with anger, complete with gnashing of teeth and harsh words that day, but Liz had failed to see it. She was seeing a lot now.

 

“Is this what was all about? Revenge for faking my death?”

 

He laughed, the sound far colder than she was used to. “Self-centered as usual. But I suppose it has been my fault as well. I did give you the mistaken impression that the earth revolved around you. No, Agent Keen, I can assure you that this has nothing to do with you or your actions, treacherous as they might have been.”

 

“You know.” She didn’t elaborate but then she was well aware she didn’t have to.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Dembe told you, didn’t he?”

 

“No, he did not. He kept your secret till the end.”

 

Liz’s stomach twisted into tight knots. “Dembe wasn’t in on it? He doesn’t know you’re alive? Red, you have to tell him! This past year… this past year has been hard on all of us. Dembe’s crushed.”

 

His lips curved unpleasantly, a muscled jumping in his left cheek. His face darkened, his gaze sharpening into a murderous glare. Liz’s extremities went cold.

 

“Haven’t you caused enough damage to my relationship with my brother?”

 

Liz swallowed hard. “I… I… Red, I… you were fighting for you life and….”

 

“And you resented that every step of the way, didn’t you? You and the colleagues put up an excellent show of attempting to save me but you went too far. You tipped your hand. You should have never told me you love me. That’s when I knew.”

 

“I do… Raymond, I do love you. I think I’ve loved for a very long time without even knowing it. I’ve lied about a lot of things but not about this. If you never believe a word I say ever again—and I wouldn’t blame if you didn’t—please believe me when I say that I love you. This year… it’s been hell. There were days when I felt like my heart was there in the grave with you. It may have taken me too long to figure out but this is the only truth that matters between us: that we love each other.” She glanced at the machine. “You don’t need the leap of faith. Here’s scientific proof that I’m telling the truth.”

 

“Or you’ve found a way to beat the machine,” he pointed out coolly.

 

It stung. This betrayal fractured something between and that became more and more obvious with each passing minute. She licked at her lips. “I haven’t. For the record, while I’m still strapped to the Polygraph, the task force and I were really racing to save your life. No catch. No agenda.”

 

“Really?” he mocked, bitterness seeping into his voice. “From my vantage point, you were all using the American justice system as a weapon to murder me.”

Liz gaped at him. Apparently, her actions had undone more than just the trust between her and Red. “The team had nothing to do with it. I made the call.” She focused, trying to persuade herself she was telling the truth. All things considered, she didn’t want to get Jennifer killed. “I, alone.”

 

“Even strapped to the Polygraph, you’re lying, Elizabeth. And you wonder why I think you perhaps found a way to deceive even a mechanical device? I know of Jennifer’s involvement.”

 

Liz’s mouth went dry. “Is… is she…?”

 

“She’s alive and well, last I checked, but that was a year ago. If anything befell her in the meantime, it wasn’t by my hand. Your concern is touching. But this business between us is not why you are here, Elizabeth. It’s ugly and I’ve had no desire to visit it or you. Ever. You had finally gotten your wish. I was out of your life for good. However, I need to know this: who tipped off the FBI to my location? So the question becomes now: how difficult on yourself are you going to make this?”

 

Was that a veiled threat of torture? Had she fallen so low in his affections that he would hurt her now? She recalled he had shot Kate. No, she couldn’t believe he would harm her. Not now. Not ever. She didn’t ping his radar that way. She was special! He had said so himself. But that didn’t meant Liz wouldn’t tell him the preciously little she knew. It wasn’t even a matter of betraying the Bureau. He had gotten far more from it over the years.

 

“Ask me anything you want to know and I’ll tell you.”

 

“Of course. Betrayal runs deep in your blood.”

 

He, apparently, did think he was betraying the FBI.

 

“Maybe but that’s not why I’m gonna tell you everything.” She fixed her gaze on his. “Which isn’t much, by the way. The FBI got an anonymous tip from the US Marshals, from Cynthia Panabaker, to be more exact. She said it came from an anonymous call. She didn’t put much stock into it but since it involved a homegrown sleeper cell, she felt compelled to bring it to us. There’s nothing else. If it was, I’d know about it. I’ve been keeping tabs on your organization but nothing surfaced in the past year. Nothing to indicate you were still alive and running things from the shadows, if that’s what you’re wondering. As far as the Bureau knows, you’re dead and your syndicate crumbled without you. There hasn’t been significant new information since your execution.”

 

He studied her carefully then got up and left without a word, ignoring her when she called after him.

 

* * *  


Red entered the observation room with a heavy, conflicted heart that he tried to set aside. For once he was grateful for the presence of the black pants suit clad figure. Where Elizabeth was concerned, he would never think straight. Her repeating that she loved him with w hat appeared to be conviction had gotten to him, despite his best wishes. It was a slippery slope. It would take only one or two steps to let his guard down with her again. Just like he had done after she had faked her death. He had swallowed his anger, his hurt feelings and the sense that things would never been quite the same between them again, and moved on, falling into the same traps, sacrificing himself for her, following her around like a faithful dog, taking her insults and contempt in stride. But it had never been enough. It would never be enough, he understood that now. That road had only one destination: the execution chamber.

 

“This is an unexpected advantage,” the woman informed him.

 

“Is it my imagination or were you just listening in? How is anything that went on in there any kind of advantage?”

 

“She’s in love with you.”

 

“So she says.”

 

“Call it a woman’s intuition but Elizabeth Keen or Masha Rostova or whatever is in love with you. I’m not saying you two will walk into the sunset together or that you should do anything about it. God forbid! But we can use it to track down who sicced the FBI on us.”

 

“We both know who did.”

 

She frowned but nodded, nonetheless. “Yes, we do, but we still need a name. The specifics, I mean.”

 

He stepped closer to her, feeling the tell-tale jump in the muscles of his left cheek. “Listen to me. I’ve known Elizabeth Keen for eight years. She’s not the hapless ingenue dragged down to the deep by a dark monster. Christine Daaé, she’s not, nor has she ever been. Have you ever held a newly caught, live fish in your hands? No? I suppose not. The moment you think your grip is the firmest, it will escape you and wrestle free, back into the water.”

 

“Christine Daaé betrayed the Phantom and ran off with the handsome, young man. Agent Keen _is_ Christine Daaé! Besides, what else do you suggest we do? I have no qualms about shooting her and dissolving the body in acid. An FBI agent disappearing during a raid on a terrorist cell. It’s not that unusual. It should pose no problems for us. But would you be amenable to it?”

 

He cocked his head to the side. “We’ll have to set up a test first.”

 

“Looks who’s finally learned his lesson.”

 

“Fool me a hundred times,” he muttered. “You didn’t ask me?”

 

“Ask you what?”

 

“If I return Elizabeth’s feelings.”

 

“Does it matter? Even if you did, you have eight years of letting your heart rule your head. How well did that turn out for you again?”

 

* * *

 

A door creaked opened in the obscurity somewhere in front of Liz. She heard footsteps and tensed but relaxed again a second later when Red came into view.

 

“What’s the verdict? Am I telling the truth?”

 

He didn’t reply but merely came to tower over her. He began removing the electrodes glued to her chest, the vaguely rough pads of his fingers brushing her skin. She shivered and looked up at him. He seemed to have lost a bit of weight but his biceps was thicker than she recalled so perhaps he was just getting more exercise. If he was taking better care of himself, then she was glad. Perhaps being dead treated him well. In any case, he was just as handsome as ever.

 

“Red,” she whispered, pleading with her eyes.

 

That very instant a hail of shoots rang loudly from somewhere close.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Liz frowned. The shooting sounded like it was getting closer. “What’s happening?” she asked of Red.

 

“We’re under attack.”

 

“Give me a gun. I can help.”

 

He said nothing in reply. Instead he pulled a black hood over her head, instantly blacking out her sight. She protested and begged him to talk to her but he didn’t. Her only answer came in the form of his departing footsteps. He was gone in matter of seconds.

 

It didn’t last long. In under two minutes, what looked like commando troops rescued her. Liz convincingly faked excitement at that.

 

* * *

 

When Liz returned to Quantico, she was immediately called to Cooper’s office, where she didn’t find him alone. He was with a woman Liz had never seen before. Dressed in a black pants suit, she looked official and though as nails. She had long, brown fair, sharp, brown eyes that sparkled with intelligence, and an abundance of laughter lines. She looked to be in her early to mid-sixties. When Liz came in, she smiled. Her thin, elegant lips were painted with a pale coral lipstick. There was something about that smile that was far too genial for Liz’s liking.

 

“Agent Keen, come in,” Cooper invited formally, though Liz had already entered. His tone held a warning. It meant that they had to be at their most official. “This is Ann Adler. She is the director of National Clandestine Services.”

 

 _Great_ , Liz thought. _Just great!_

 

“National Clandestine Services?”

 

Ann’s smiled anew. Liz grew even more distrustful that instant.

 

“I know what you’re thinking but I can assure you my organization and I are not in league in the Cabal or any other worldwide conspiracy. I was appointed specifically to clean house after Peter Kotsiopoulos and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Heads have rolled but the loyalty of National Clandestine Services has finally returned where it belongs. I’m here in the interest of national security alone.”

“Ms. Adler’s people were the ones who liberated you, Agent Keen,” Cooper interjected carefully. Clearly he shared Liz’s misgivings about the new Director.

 

“Thank you,” Liz said with utmost insincerity. “May I ask how you found me?”

 

“We didn’t. We had no idea you were there. We were merely chasing a tip about a domestic terrorist cell. I was hoping Agent Keen can shed some light onto the people who took her. They seemed well trained, professionals, far past the capabilities of the average homegrown disgruntled nut.”

 

Even if this woman’s name had been Goody McGoodguy, Liz wouldn’t have told her about Red. Under the circumstances, she was far more inclined to lie.

 

“I didn’t see anything,” Liz said summoning her best poker face. “I had a hunch about that back alley and went to check it out. I had been just about to call my colleagues with my location, when I was struck from behind. They didn’t take my hood off the entire time. A man asked me questions about who I was and how I had found them. His voice had a strange, metallic pitch, as if it had been modified by a voice modulation device. I doubt I could I ID it. I’m sorry, I wish I could have been more helpful.”

 

“Perhaps our joint investigation will manage to reveal more,” the Director said, giving Liz a small, thankful smile. “Agent Keen, we’ll let you leave now. I’m sure you want to rest.”

 

“Joint investigation?” Liz asked, glancing at Cooper.

 

He didn’t look too happy about it, either. “Orders of the Director of Central Intelligence,” Cooper explained.

 

Crap! She needed to find Red. He was in danger.

 

* * *

 

Ann Adler got into her black Lexus parked in a VIP spot in the FBI’s garage at Quantico. She pressed number 8 on her speed dial before taking her satellite phone to her left ear.

 

“Surprise, surprise! She didn’t give you up. According to the bug I planted in Assistant Director Cooper’s office, she didn’t tell him later either. In fact, I doubt she told anyone at all. She took the rest of the day off claiming she was still rattled from the experience.”

 

“You have your joint investigation. Why do you want a source inside the FBI? Especially one as unpredictable as Elizabeth Keen?”

 

“Is this your first day?” she quipped. “It always pays to have eyes and ears everywhere. Do I need to remind of the problem the new Director of the Bureau posses?”

 

* * *

 

Liz was driving home, her head so filled with conflicting thoughts that they were ready to give her a massive head-ached. Or an aneurysm. She feared a Cabal resurgence. She feared what it could mean for Red. And her heart… her heart was even more of a mess.

 

Something about the whole thing bothered her. Like a persistent niggling at the back of her mind that was more of an annoyance than anything else. She pulled the over the side of the road and got out, breathing in deeply. It smelled like the city: exhaust and a faint, underlying scent of stale garbage. It had smelled even worse in that back alley where she had seen Red. Cyanide gas. Had Red really released cyanide gas on them? What if he hadn’t known it was them? With the team scrambling to find her, they hadn’t had a chance to investigate her claim that there were hidden street cams.

 

She called Aram. Her colleagues had indeed gone back to search the alley together with a handful of National Clandestine Services agents to aid them but they had found nothing. That didn’t mean they hadn’t been there and that Red’s people hadn’t returned to erase all trace. The gun in the hand of the woman who appeared to be Red’s bodyguard flashed into her mind: a SIG Sauer P226. She couldn’t recall Red’s men ever using that particular weapon. Military personnel, several police departments and federal agencies utilized them, including NCIS, Navy SEALs or the Secret Service.

 

She called Ressler and tried to play it casual when she asked him what sort of weapons the National Clandestine Services people were employing. He was suspicious—she could tell—but he told her nonetheless. It was SIG Sauer P226. Liz slammed her phone in a pocket. Her chest felt like it had been set on fire. She got back behind the wheel.

 

What was she doing? Falling back on toxic old habits. Digging behind Red’s back without hearing him out first. She needed to find him, even if she didn’t have a clue where to start. She could go to his apartment in Bethesda but Dembe lived there now, surrounded by Red’s things, his own private form of self-flagellation for failing to save his brother. She couldn’t believe Red hadn’t told him he was still alive. She tried to see things from Red’s perspective too. To discover just as he had been about to die that she had betrayed him again and that his brother had lied to cover for her. It was no wonder he thought they had been in it together all of them, including the task force. It was no wonder he was as hurt and as furious as she was. If their places had been reversed and Red had done that to her, she would have dug his heart out of his chest with her bare hands. All in all, his reaction had been remarkably subdued. Especially for one who valued loyalty like Red did. She shuddered to think that he had chosen to disappear over repaying his treacherous loved ones in kind.

 

* * *  


Red was tinkering with a cylinder music box in the small repair shop he had put together in the second guest room of his house. Blanketed in the light spilling from the French window, Leah reclined in a loveseat reading. Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 played by London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bernstein could be heard on vinyl.

 

It was peaceful, quiet. Red didn’t love Leah and she didn’t love him. They relationship was too new to have had time to develop any depth. They did like each other and got along reasonably well. This could be something. If only he didn’t see Elizabeth’s face every time he closed his eyes. Meeting her again had left a profound impact but he knew he had it in him to shake it off. Then why wasn’t he putting more effort into it? He knew why. He loved her. Still. Despite the fact that she had broken his heart in every conceivable way. She had even gotten Dembe mired into her deceit. Nobody else had accomplished that. Elizabeth could deprive him of absolutely everything. And he, glutton for punishment that he was, still loved her. He loved her with a passion that ached and made his blood sing. He felt as if he had been poisoned but still couldn’t help thinking of going back to the well for more.

 

“What’s wrong?” Leah asked all of the sudden.

 

“Am I that obvious?”

 

“Your breathing keeps changing rhythm,” she replied.

 

He smiled a little but it felt a lot like sadness. He abandoned his work and came to sit on a chair next to her.

 

“Remember I told you about the women in my life?”

 

“You told me you used to be married but your wife and daughter died,” she recapped. “That you lost the second woman you loved and then… there was someone else. A woman who broke your heart. I’m sorry, William, I can’t imagine how hard all of this must have been on you.”

 

He swallowed, running his tongue on the inside of a cheek. “Yeah…. The last one. The woman who broke my heart… her name’s Elizabeth.”

 

“She is back in your life,” she deduced, her voice perfectly even.

 

He nodded then added out loud: “Yes, she is.”

 

“You still love her.” There was absolutely no question in there.

 

“Not one of my proudest moments,” he admitted quietly.

 

“The heart wants what it wants.”

 

“In my experience, the best relationships arise from the marriage of the heart and of the mind.”

 

She took a while to speak again. “What do you want?”

 

“I want… the woman who’s asking me that.”

 

“It’s doesn’t work like that, William.”

 

“Why shouldn’t it?”

 

“Because this is real life and not a fairy tale.”

 

He scoffed. “If this was a fairy tale, I would have turned into the young, handsome prince she wants when she told him she loves me.”

 

“You already are devastatingly handsome, William.” She searched with her right hand through the air. He drew closer and allowed her long, delicate fingers to trace his features. Her touch was gentle, careful, exactly what he yearned for the most. He closed his eyes, soaking the freely offered affection. “What does it matter how old you are? Nobody’s young forever.”

 

There! That was the whole crux of the matter. Leah made him feel human. He hadn’t had that since Josephine. Elizabeth made him feel like a monster. He understood now why the past year wasn’t half the horror he had expected it to be. Stepping back even a bit into the shoes of the man he had once been had made him hate himself a little less. Seeing Elizabeth again had reminded him acutely of what it felt to be the disfigured fish at the bottom of dark, watery cave.

 

The memory of Elizabeth’s lost, wounded gaze directed at him burnt. As did the urgency to go and comfort her. He knew where he lived after all. He could wait for her to come home in her apartment like he had done so many times before. Yet he restrained himself. Not because he wanted her to be in pain but because he didn’t want to suffer himself. It wasn’t even that he guarded his heart.

 

He placed a kiss at center of Leah’s palm. He didn’t want to go back. That was it. That was what kept him from going to Elizabeth. He liked the light, sparse as it was. He would never be William Kershaw again. Not really. It wasn’t how he had expected the saga of Raymond Reddington to end, either. Nevertheless he felt if not at peace then comforted where he was right now. He was in no hurry to leave. He quite liked being human, he realized.

 

* * *

 

Liz sat on the couch in her apartment, drinking vodka without the aid of a glass. She held the bottle in her right hand and a took a swig every now and then, desperate to slow down her thoughts that spun in her head on a loop. Red. The reappearance of the National Clandestine Services. The SIG Sauer P226 gun. The lack of warmth in Red’s eyes. The rejection. The doubts. The uncertainty.

 

She had never imagined her love for Red might be unrequited. He had sacrificed himself for her too many times to count. Literally. She had really lost count. He had been by her side no matter what. And the way he used to look at her. Even back when she hadn’t want to admit the obvious, she had known. Deep down inside. That was the way a man gazed at the woman he loved. Or so she had surmised. Now she wasn’t so sure.

 

She had been almost positive she would find him in her apartment when she got home. She counted on it. She had looked forward to it. She had been wrong about that. What else was she wrong about? Besides her own feelings for so long? Perhaps too long.

 

She drank again. The vodka burnt a trail down her throat. Rejection sucked.

 

Red had called the woman with the SIG Sauer P226 Raquel. It wasn’t much to go on but maybe she could track her down. No, she stopped herself. That was the old her. The one who didn’t know she loved Red and nothing mattered besides that. She needed to curb those impulses that had brought them to disaster before.

 

She placed the bottle on the floor and kicked off her shoes. Then she lay on the couch, her head on its arm. Could he truly not love her? Could it be that he had loved her once and had stopped after her last betrayal? He was alive and well. It should be enough. Her hands formed fists, her short fingernails digging into her palms. Red was hers. How had he put it?

 

 _I have you and you have me_.

 

He had to love her. He just had to.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know it may be absurd to ask given the content of this story but could you please not post spoilers for future episodes in the comments? Thanks a bunch! Also, please do comment. Thank you!


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